Observing this torrent of money and innovation is Danielle Gould, founder of Food + Tech Connect. Four years ago, Gould was working for a company that designed greenhouses when she noted her Twitter feed was pulsing with information about food-focused tech businesses.

From a small online newsletter, Food+Tech Connect has grown into what Gould calls the “publication of record and connection” that tracks the birth of new companies and major rounds of funding. It now sponsors gatherings and hackathons in San Francisco and New York and has begun offering online courses for food companies who want to seek out funding or refine their business strategies. We conducted a short Q&A with Gould last week.

You’re seeing a fair amount of large investments. For example, in October 2013, [ed note: even before Q1] Monsanto acquired The Climate Corporation for close to $1 billion — that was a big signal to the market that there is a lot of opportunity here. A year ago, it was very hard for people to get funding. Now you’re seeing rounds of $20 million to $30 million in Series B and C funding, and $2 million to $3 million in series A funding.

Why now? Why not earlier?

A few reasons. From the agriculture technology perspective, a lot of “clean tech” investors were recently burned, so they’re looking to diversify their investments. Agriculture is similar to energy. They understand the sector. A lot of people now want to make investments in social causes, and food is an area closely aligned with social ventures.

In addition, technology is touching everything. More farmers are using cell phones, consumers are more likely to shop online, and that’s reducing the barriers to entry for new tech businesses. Also, the infrastructure (broadband, wifi, etc.) is getting more robust.

In the past, a couple of problems constrained investment. Number one was that investors were scared off by WebVan [ed note: the San Francisco-based online grocery company that went bust in 2001]. They equated food with Webvan.

The other thing is that most tech investors didn’t understand the food industry — which is very complex — and food investors didn’t understand technology. Entrepreneurs had to do a lot of explaining, a lot of hand holding. And when you explain that much, people aren’t going to invest in it.

That’s starting to change. More market data is available to study, and there have been more successes — Monsanto acquiring The Climate Corporation, for instance, or GrubHub acquiring Seamless. And these are just early days. Within this year alone, we’ve seen five or six IPOs.

Are Silicon Valley and the Bay Area at the center of these food technology startups?

No! What’s interesting is that there are online grocers selling local food in every single region of the country. You hear a lot about Good Eggs and Abe’s Market — but there’s also Relay Foods expanding up the East Coast, Greenling in Texas, and a few in the Midwest. Silicon Valley startups get the most attention and investment, but there’s a lot going on around the country. Some of the most interesting stuff is being developed by people who simply have a problem they want to use technology to solve.